Walter Besant
All Sorts and Conditions of Men: An Impossible Story
They stayed to supper, and they appreciated the gift of Miss Messenger; then they had the little dance – Dick Coppin now taking his part without shame. While the dancing went on the Chartist sat in the corner of the room, talking with Angela. When he went away his heart – which was large and generous – burned within him, and he had visions of a time when the voices of the poor shall not be raised against the rich nor the minds of the rich hardened against the poor. Perhaps he came unconsciously nearer to Christianity, this man who was a scoffer and an unbeliever, that night than he had ever before. To have faith in the future forms, indeed, a larger part of the Christian religion than some of us ever realize. And to believe in a single woman is one step, however small, toward believing in the Divine Man.
CHAPTER XLII.
NOT JOSEPHUS, BUT ANOTHER
The attractions of a yard peopled with ghosts, discontented figure-heads, and an old man, are great at first, but not likely to be lasting if one does not personally see or converse with the ghosts and if the old man becomes monotonous. We expect too much of old men. Considering their years, we think their recollections must be wonderful. One says, "Good heavens! Methuselah must recollect William the Conqueror and King John, and Sir John Falstaff, to say nothing of the battle of Waterloo!" As a matter of fact, Methuselah generally remembers nothing except that where Cheapside now stands was once a green field. As for Shakespeare, and Coleridge, and Charles Lamb, he knows nothing whatever about them. You see if he had taken so much interest in life as to care about things going on, he would very soon, like his contemporaries, have worn out the machine, and would be lying, like them, in the grassy inclosure.
Harry continued to go to the carver's yard for some time, but nothing more was to be learned from him. He knew the family history, however, by this time, pretty well. The Coppins of Stepney, like all middle-class families, had experienced many ups and downs. They had been churchwardens; they had been bankrupts; they had practised many trades; and once there was a Coppin who died, leaving houses – twelve houses – three apiece to his children – a meritorious Coppin. Where were those houses now? Absorbed by the omnivorous Uncle Bunker. And how Uncle Bunker got those belonging to Caroline Coppin could not now be ascertained, except from Uncle Bunker himself. Everywhere there are scrapers and scatterers; the scrapers are few, and the scatterers many. By what scatterer or what process of scattering did Caroline lose her houses?
Meantime, Harry did not feel himself obliged to hold his tongue upon the subject; and everybody knew, before long, that something was going on likely to be prejudicial to Mr. Bunker. People whispered that Bunker was going to be caught out; this rumor lent to the unwilling agent some of the interest which attaches to a criminal. Some went so far as to say that they had always suspected him because he was so ostentatious in his honesty; and this is a safe thing to say, because any person may be reasonably suspected; and if we did not suspect all the world, why the machinery of bolts and bars, keys and patent safes? But it is the wise man who suspects the right person, and it is the justly proud man who strikes an attitude and says: "What did I tell you?" As yet, however, the suspicions were vague. Bunker, for his part, though not generally a thin-skinned man, easily perceived that there was a change in the way he was received and regarded; people looked at him with marked interest in the streets; they turned their heads and looked after him; they talked about him as he approached; they smiled with meaning; Josephus Coppin met him one day, and asked him why he would not tell his nephew how he obtained those three houses and what consideration he gave for them. He began, especially of an evening, over brandy and water, to make up mentally, over and over again, his own case, so that it might be presented at the right moment absolutely perfect and without a flaw; a paragon among cases. His nephew, whom he now regarded with a loathing almost lethal, was impudent enough to go about saying that he had got those houses unlawfully. Was he? Very good; he would have such law as is to be had in England, for the humiliation, punishment, stamping out, and ruining of that nephew; aye, if it cost him five hundred pounds he would. He should like to make his case public; he was not afraid; not a bit; let all the world know; the more the story was known, the more would his contemporaries admire his beautiful and exemplary virtue, patience, and moderation. There were, he said, with the smile of benevolence and blush of modesty which so well become the good man, transactions, money transactions, between himself and his sister-in-law, especially after her marriage with a man who was a secret scatterer. These money matters had been partly squared by the transfer of the houses, which he took in part payment; the rest he forgave when Caroline died, and when, which showed his goodness in an electric light, he took over the boy to bring him up to some honest trade, though he was a beggar. Where were the proofs of those transactions? Unfortunately they were all destroyed by fire some years since, after having been carefully preserved, and docketed, and indorsed, as is the duty of every careful man of business.
Now by dint of repeating this precious story over and over again, the worthy man came to believe it entirely, and to believe that other people would believe it as well. It seemed, in fact, so like the truth, that it would deceive even experts, and pass for that priceless article. At the time when Caroline died, and the boy went to stay with him, no one asked any questions, because it seemed nobody's business to inquire into the interest of the child. After the boy was taken away it gradually became known among the surviving members of the family that the houses had long before, owing to the profligate extravagance of the sergeant – as careful a man as ever marched – passed into the hands of Bunker, who now had all the Coppin houses. Everything was clean forgotten by this time. And the boy must needs turn up again, asking questions. A young villain! A serpent! But he should be paid out.
A very singular accident prevented the "paying out" quite in the sense intended by Mr. Bunker. It happened in this way:
One day when Miss Messenger's cabinet-maker and joiner-in-ordinary, having little or nothing to do, was wandering about the Brewery, looking about him, lazily watching the process of beer-making on a large extensive scale, and exchanging the compliments of the season, which was near the new year, with the workmen, it happened that he passed the room in which Josephus had sat for forty years among the juniors. The door stood open, and he looked in, as he had often done before, to nod a friendly salutation to his cousin. There Josephus sat, with gray hair, an elderly man among boys, mechanically ticking off entries among the lads. His place was in the warm corner near the fire; beside him stood a large and massive safe; the same safe out of which, during an absence of three minutes, the country notes had been so mysteriously stolen.
The story, of course, was well known. Josephus' version of the thing was also well known. Everybody further knew that, until the mystery of that robbery was cleared up, Josephus would remain a junior on 30s. a week. Lastly, everybody (with the kindliness of heart common to our glorious humanity) firmly believed that Josephus had really cribbed those notes, but had been afraid to present them, and so dropped them into a fire, or down a drain. It is truly remarkable to observe how deeply we respect, adore, and venerate virtue – insomuch that we all go about pretending to be virtuous; yet how little we believe in the virtue of each other! It is also remarkable to reflect upon the extensive fields still open to the moralist, after all these years of preaching and exhorting.
Now, as Harry looked into the room, his eye fell upon the safe, and a curious thing occurred. The fragment of a certain letter from Bob Coppin (in which he sent a message by his friend to his cousin, Squaretoes Josephus) quite suddenly and unexpectedly returned to his memory – further, the words assumed a meaning.
"Josephus," he said, stepping into the office, "lend me a piece of paper and a pencil. Thank you."
He wrote down the words exactly as he recollected them – half destroyed by the tearing of the letter.
" … Josephus, my cousin, that he will … 'nd the safe the bundle … or a lark. Josephus is a squaretoes. I hate a man who won't drink. He will … if he looks there."
When he had written these words down he read them over again, while the lads looked on with curiosity and some resentment. Cabinet-makers and joiners have no business to swagger about the office of young gentlemen who are clerks in breweries, as if it were their own place. It is an innovation – a levelling of rank.
"Josephus," Harry whispered, "you remember your cousin, Bob Coppin?"
"Yes; but these are office hours. Conversation is not allowed in the juniors' room."
He spoke as if he was still a boy – as indeed, he was, having been confined to the society of boys, and having drawn the pay of a boy for so many years.
"Never mind rules – tell me all about Bob."
"He was a drinker and a spendthrift – that's enough about him."
Josephus spoke in a whisper, being anxious not to discuss the family disgrace among his fellow-clerks.
"Good! Were you a friend as well as a cousin of his?"
"No, I never was – I was respectable in those days, and desirous of getting my character high for steadiness. I went to evening lectures and taught in the Wesleyan Sunday-schools. Of course, when the notes were stolen, it was no use trying any more for character – that was gone. A young man suspected of stealing £14,000 can't get any character at all. So I gave up attending the evening lectures, and left off teaching in the school, and going to church, and everything."
"You were a great fool, Josephus – you ought to have gone on and fought it out. Now then, on the day that you lost the money, had you seen Bob – do you remember?"
"That day?" the unlucky junior replied; "I remember every hour as plain as if it was to-day. Yes, I saw Bob. He came to the office half an hour before I lost the notes. He wanted me to go out with him in the evening, I forget where – some gardens, and dancing, and prodigalities. I refused to go. In the evening I saw him again, and he did nothing but laugh while I was in misery. It seemed cruel; and the more I suffered the louder he laughed."
"Did you never see Bob again?"
"No; he went away to sea, and he came home and went away again; but somehow I never saw him. It is twenty years now since he went away last, and was never heard of, nor his ship – so, of course, he's dead long ago. But what does it matter about Bob? And these are office hours; and there will, really, be things said if we go on talking – do go away."
Harry obeyed, and left him; but he went straight to the office of the chief accountant and requested an interview.
The chief accountant sent word that he could communicate his business through one of the clerks. Harry replied that his business was of a nature which could not be communicated by a clerk – that it was very serious and important business, which must be imparted to the chief alone; and that he would wait his convenience in the outer office. Presently he was ushered into the presence of the great man.
"This is very extraordinary," said the official. "What can your business be, which is so important that it must not be intrusted to the clerks? Now come to the point, young man – my time is valuable."
"I want you to authorize me to make a little examination in the junior clerks' room."
"What examination, and why?"
Harry gave him the fragment of the letter, and explained where he found it.
"I understand nothing. What do you learn from this fragment?"
"There is no date," said Harry, "but that matters very little. You will observe that it clearly refers to my cousin Josephus Coppin."
"That seems evident – Josephus is not a common name."
"You know my cousin's version of the loss of those notes?"
"Certainly – he said they must have been stolen during the two or three minutes that he was out of the room."
"Yes – now" (Harry wrote a few words to fill up the broken sentences of the letter) "read that, sir."
"Good heavens!"
"My cousin tells me, too," he went on, "that this fellow, Bob Coppin, was in the office half an hour before the notes were missed – why, very likely he was at the time hanging about the place – and that in the evening, when his cousin was in an agony of distress, Bob was laughing as if the whole thing was a joke."
"Upon my word," said the chief, "it seems plausible."
"We can try the thing at once," said Harry. "But I should like you to be present when we do."
"Undoubtedly I will be present – come, let us go at once. By the way, you were the young man recommended by Miss Messenger; are you not?"
"Yes. Not that I have the honor of knowing Miss Messenger personally."
The chief accountant laughed. Cabinet-makers do not generally know young ladies of position; and this was such a remarkably cheeky young workman.
They took with them four stout fellows from those who toss about the casks of beer. The safe was one of the larger kind, standing three feet six inches high, on a strong wooden box, with an open front – it was in the corner next to Josephus' seat. Between the back of the safe and the wall was a space of an inch or so.
"I must trouble you to change your seat," said the chief accountant to Josephus, "we are about to move this safe."
Josephus rose, and the men presently, with mighty efforts, lugged the great heavy thing a foot or two from its place.
"Will you look, sir?" asked Harry. "If there is anything there, I should like you, who know the whole story, to find it."
The chief stooped over the safe and looked behind it. Everybody was now aware that something was going to happen; and though pens continued to be dipped into inkstands with zeal, and heads to be bent over desks with the devotion which always seizes a junior clerk in presence of his chief, all eyes were furtively turned to Josephus' corner.
"There is a bundle of papers," he said. "Thank you."
Harry picked them up and placed them in his hands.
The only person who paid no heed to the proceedings was the most concerned.
The chief accountant received them (a rolled bundle, not a tied-up parcel, and covered inch deep with black dust). He opened it and glanced at the contents – then a strange and unaccountable look came into his eyes as he handed them to Josephus.
"Will you oblige me, Mr. Coppin," he said, "by examining those papers?"
It was the first time that the title of "Mr." had been bestowed upon Josephus during all the years of his long servitude. He was troubled by it, and he could not understand the expression in his chief's eyes; and when he turned to Harry for an explanation he met eyes in which the same sympathy and pity were expressed. When he turned to the boys, his fellow-clerks, he was struck by their faces of wondering expectation.
What was going to happen?
Recovering his presence of mind, he held out the dusty papers and shook the dust off them.
Then he began slowly to obey orders, and to examine them.
Suddenly he began to turn them over with fierce eagerness. His eyes flashed – he gasped.
"Come, Josephus," said his cousin, taking his arm, "gently – gently. What are they, these papers?"
The man laughed, a hysterical laugh.
"They are. Ha! ha! they are – ha! ha! ha!"
He did not finish because his voice failed him; but he dropped into a chair, with his head in his hands.
"They are country bank-notes and other papers," said Harry, taking them from his cousin's hands – he had interpreted the missing words rightly.
The chief looked round the room. "Young men," he said solemnly, "a wonderful thing has happened. After many years of undeserved suspicion and unmerited punishment, Mr. Coppin's character is cleared at last. We cannot restore to him the years he has lost, but we can rejoice that his innocence is established."
"Come, Josephus," said Harry, "bear your good fortune as you have borne the bad – rouse yourself."
The senior junior clerk lifted his head and looked around. His cheeks were white. His eyes were filled with tears; his lips were trembling.
"Take your cousin home," said the chief to Harry, "and then come back to my office."
Harry led Josephus unresisting home to the boarding-house.
"We have had a shock, Mrs. Bormalack. Nothing to be alarmed about – quite the contrary. The bank-notes have been found after all these years, and my cousin has earned his promotion and recovered his character. Give him some brandy and water, and make him lie down for a bit."
For the man was dazed – he could not understand as yet what had happened.
Harry placed him in the armchair, and left him to the care of the landlady. Then he went back to the brewery.
The chief brewer was with the chief accountant, and they were talking over what was best to be done; said very kind things about intelligence, without which good fortune and lucky finds are wasted. And they promised to represent Harry's conduct in a proper light to Miss Messenger, who would be immediately communicated with; and Josephus would at once receive a very substantial addition to his pay, a better position, and more responsible work.
"May I suggest, gentlemen," said Harry, "that a man who is fifty-five, and has all his life been doing the simple work of a junior, may not be found equal to more responsible work."
"That may be the case."
"My cousin, when the misfortune happened, left off taking any interest in things – I believe he has never opened a book or learned anything in all these years."
"Well, we shall see." A workman was not to be taken into counsel. "There is, however, something here which seems to concern yourself. Your mother was one Caroline Coppin, was she not?"
"Yes."
"Then these papers which were deposited by some persons unknown with Mr. Messenger – most likely for greater care – and placed in the safe by him, belong to you; and I hope will prove of value to you."
Harry took them without much interest, and came away.
In the evening Josephus held a reception. All his contemporaries in the brewery – the men who entered with himself – all those who had passed over his head, all those with whom he had been a junior in the brewery, called to congratulate him. At the moment he felt as if this universal sympathy fully made up for all his sufferings of the past. Nor was it until the morning that he partly perceived the truth – that no amount of sympathy would restore his vanished youth, and give him what he had lost.
But he will never quite understand this; and he looked upon himself as having begun again from the point where he stopped. When the reception was over and the last man gone, he began to talk about his future.
"I shall go on again with the evening course," he said, "just where I left off. I remember we were having Monday for book-keeping by single and double entry; Tuesday for French; Thursday for arithmetic – we were in mixed fractions; and Friday for Euclid. Then I shall take up my class at the Sunday-school again, and shall become a full church-member of the Wesleyan connection – for though my father was once churchwarden at Stepney church, I always favored the Wesleyans myself."
He talked as if he was a boy again, with all his life before him, and, indeed, at the moment he thought he was.
CHAPTER XLIII.
O MY PROPHETIC SOUL!
Harry thought nothing about the papers which were found among the notes that evening, because he was wholly engaged in the contemplation of a man who had suddenly gone back thirty-five years in his life. The gray hairs, thin at the top and gone at the temples, were not, it is true, replaced by the curly brown locks of youth, though one thinks that Josephus must always have been a straight-haired young man. But it was remarkable to hear that man of fifty-five talking as if the years had rolled backward, and he could take up the thread of life where he had dropped it so long ago. He spoke of his evening lectures and his Sunday-school with the enthusiasm of a boy. He would study – work of that sort always paid: he would prepare his lessons for the school beforehand, and stand well with the superintendent: it was good for men in business offices, he said, to have a good character with the superintendent. Above all, he would learn French and bookkeeping, with mensuration, gauging, and astronomy, at the Beaumont Institute. All these things would come in useful, some time or the other, at the brewery; besides, it helps a man to be considered studious in his habits. He became, in fact, in imagination a young man once more. And because in the old days, when he had a character to earn, he did not smoke tobacco, so now he forgot that former solace of the day, his evening pipe.
"The brewery," he said, "is a splendid thing to get into. You can rise: you may become – ah! even chief accountant: you may look forward to draw over a thousand a year at the brewery, if you are steady and well conducted, and get a good name. It is not every one, mind you, gets the chance of such a service. And once in, always in. That's the pride of the brewery. No turning out: there you stay, with your salary always rising, till you die."
In the morning, the exultation of spirits was exchanged for a corresponding depression. Josephus went to the brewery, knowing that he should sit on that old seat of his no longer.
He went to look at it: the wooden stool was worn black; the desk was worn black; he knew every cut and scratch in the lid at which he had written so many years. There were all the books at which he had worked so long: not hard work, nor work requiring thought, but simple entering and ticking off of names, which a man can do mechanically – on summer afternoons, with the window open and an occasional bee buzzing in from Hainault Forest, and the sweet smell of the vats and the drowsy rolling of the machinery – one can do the work half asleep and never make a mistake. Now he would have to undertake some different kind of work, more responsible work: he would have to order and direct; he would have a chair instead of a stool, and a table instead of a desk. So that he began to wish that he had in the old days gone further in his studies – but he was always slow at learning – before the accident happened; and to wonder if anything at all remained of the knowledge he had then painfully acquired after all these years.
As a matter of fact, nothing remained. Josephus had become perfectly, delightfully, inconceivably stupid. He had forgotten everything, and could now learn no new thing. Pending the decision of Miss Messenger, to whom the case was referred, they tried him with all sorts of simple work – correspondence, answering letters, any of the things which require a little intelligence. Josephus could do nothing. He sat like a helpless boy and looked at the documents. Then they let him alone, and for a while he came every day, sat all day long, half asleep, and did nothing, and was much less happy than when he had been kept at work from nine o'clock in the morning till six o'clock at night.
When Harry remembered the packet of papers placed in his hand, which was on the following morning, he read them. And the effect of his reading was that he did not go to work that morning at all.
He was not a lawyer, and the principal paper was a legal instrument, the meaning of which it took him some little time to make out.
"Hum – hum – um – why can't they write plain English. 'I give to my said trustees, John Skelton and Benjamin Bunker, the three freehold houses as follows: that called number twenty-nine on Stepney Green, forty-five in Beaumont Square, and twenty-three in Redman's Row, upon trust to apply the rents and income of the same as in their absolute discretion they may think fit for the maintenance, education, and benefit of the said Caroline, until she be twenty-one years old or until she marry, and to invest from time to time the accumulations of such rents and income as is hereintofore provided, and to apply the same when invested in all respects as I direct concerning the last above-mentioned premises. And when the said Caroline shall attain the age of twenty-one, or marry, I direct my said trustees to pay to her the said rents and income and the income of the accumulation of the same, if any during her life, by four equal quarterly payments for her sole and separate use, free from the debts and engagements of any husband or husbands she may marry; and I direct that on the death of the said Caroline my said trustees shall hold and stand possessed of all the said premises for such person or persons and in such manner in all respects as the said Caroline shall by deed or will appoint. And in default of such appointment and so far as the same shall not extend upon trust' – and so on – and so on."
Harry read this document with a sense, at first, of mystification. Then he read it a second time, and began to understand it.
"The houses," he said, "my mother's houses, are hers, free from any debts contracted by her husband: they are vested in trustees for her behalf; she could not sell or part with them. And the trustees were John Skelton and Benjamin Bunker. John Skelton – gone to Abraham's bosom, I suppose. Benjamin Bunker – where will he go to? The houses were tied up – settled – entailed."
He read the document right through for the third time.
"So," he said. "The house at number twenty-nine Stepney Green. That is the house which Bunker calls his own; the house of the Associated Dressmakers; and it's mine – mine." He clinched his fist and looked dangerous. "Then the house at twenty-three Redman's Row, and at forty-five Beaumont Square. Two more houses. Also mine. And Bunker, the perfidious Bunker, calls them all his own! What shall be done to Bunker?"
"Next," he went on, after reading the document again, "Bunker is a fraudulent trustee, and his brother trustee too, unless he has gone dead. Of that there can be no doubt whatever. That virtuous and benevolent Bunker was my mother's trustee – and mine. And he calmly appropriates the trust to his own uses – Uncle Bunker! Uncle Bunker!"
"I knew from the beginning that there was something wrong. First, I thought he had taken a sum of money from Lord Jocelyn. Then I found out that he had got possession of houses in a mysterious manner. And now I find that he was simply the trustee. Wicked Uncle Bunker!"
Armed with his precious document, he put on his hat and walked straight off, resolution on his front, toward his uncle's office. He arrived just when Mr. Bunker was about to start on a daily round among his houses. By this frequent visitation he kept up the hearts of his tenants, and taught them the meaning of necessity; so that they put by their money and religiously paid the rent. Else —
"Pray," said Harry, "be so good as to take off your hat, and sit down and have five minutes' talk with me."
"No, sir," said Bunker, "I will not. You can go away, do you hear? Be off; let me lock my office and go about my own business."
"Do take off your hat, my uncle."
"Go, sir, do you hear?"
"Sit down and let us talk – my honest – trustee!"
Mr. Bunker dropped into a chair.
In all the conversations and dramatic scenes made up in his own mind to account for the possession of the houses, it had never occurred to him that the fact of his having been a trustee would come to light. All were dead, except himself, who were concerned in that trust: he had forgotten by this time that there was any deed: by ignoring the trust he simplified, to his own mind, the transfer of the houses; and during all these years he had almost forgotten the obligations of the trust.
"What do you mean?" he stammered.
"Virtuous uncle! I mean that I know all. Do you quite understand me? I mean really and truly all. Yes: all that there is to know – all that you hide away in your own mind and think that no one knows."
"What – what – what do you know?"
"First, I know which the houses are – I mean my houses – my mother's houses. The house in Stepney Green that you have let to Miss Kennedy is one; a house in Beaumont Square – do you wish to know the number? – is another; and a house in Redman's Row – and do you want to know the number of that? – is the third. You have collected the rents of those houses and paid those rents to your own account for twenty years and more."
"Go on. Let us hear what you pretend to know. Suppose they were Caroline's houses, what then?" He spoke with an attempt at bounce; but he was pale, and his eyes were unsteady.
"This next. These houses, man of probity, were not my mother's property to dispose of as she pleased."
"Oh! whose were they, then?"
"They were settled upon her and her heirs after her; and the property was placed in the hands of two trustees: yourself, my praiseworthy; and a certain John Skelton, of whom I know nothing. Presumably, he is dead."
Mr. Bunker made no reply at all. But his cheek grew paler.
"Shall I repeat this statement, or is that enough for you?" asked Harry. "The situation is pretty, perhaps not novel: the heir has gone away, probably never to come back again; the trustee, sole surviving, no doubt receives the rents. Heir comes back. Trustee swears the houses are his own. When the trustee is brought before a court of law and convicted, the judge says that the case is one of peculiar enormity, and must be met by transportation for five-and-twenty years; five – and – twenty – years, my patriarch! think of that, in uniform and with short hair."
Mr. Bunker said nothing. But by the agitation of his fingers it was plain that he was thinking a great deal.
